Alex Karp New Interview:
Ukraine Spending Expansion:
Palantir Value Report:
Alex Karp New Interview:
Recently, a new interview with Alex Karp emerged. Below are the most important points, and areas of analysis and further commentary too.
Karp said: “In the first days of the war — when the collapse of Ukraine was perceived as imminent — Kyiv looked eerily alone.“
“We have learned much in the last year of bitter fighting — how innovative minds and advanced technology, in particular software and artificial intelligence, can be paired in ways that allow David to beat a modern-day Goliath. How our approach to any conflict in the Pacific is being foreshadowed on the eastern plains of Europe. And how private industry has a foundational responsibility to partner with government to defend democratic institutions and the national interest.”
One must question as to how much of a competitive moat Palantir has within the Governmental sector, but more generally the commercial sector too, in consideration of the fact that the company has battle-tested their software over the past few years, within the hardest environments.
In consideration of the events within Ukraine, we can be confident that further adoption shall be experienced with allied nations, and other NATO alliances.
“Destruction and injustice can take many forms that touch an entire society and cross borders. But we have also witnessed the potential for software to make a positive impact on the battlefield and beyond.”
After the clear impact Palantir is having upon the Ukrainian war, the US Army General, Mark A. Milley noted that: “tenacity, will and harnessing the latest technology give the Ukrainians a decisive advantage. We are witnessing the ways wars will be fought, and won, for years to come.”
It seems clear that Palantir Gotham has been foundational for the success of the Ukrainian war through harnessing a digital software infrastructure, thus disrupting the prior analogue methods in which conflict was experienced.
“We have seen artificial intelligence transformed from coddled experiments in the research lab to resilient models that provide a real advantage on the battlefield. The ingenuity and bravery of the Ukrainian people is now showing the world how advanced technology can be harnessed to provide modern militaries with a new advantage: a decision advantage.”
Whilst currently, AI has been focused upon within the commercial context, AI within the context of warfare has been a focal point for Palantir, over the past few years. Alex Karp believes that Palantir is the precursor for Artificial Intelligence:
Alex Karp noted the fact that all nations, specifically based upon the events within Eastern Europe, are now looking into AI. Furthermore, in terms of the private context, these platforms take multiple years to build, prior to even utilising artificial intelligence. AI can not solely be built without an underling platform.
Important questions must be asked: namely, how does one ensure security, and transparency issues are met? The fundamental takeaway, according to Alex Karp, was the fact that Palantir is the precursor for AI.
“One year in, we now see that those with the best trained artificial intelligence models can outmanoeuvre adversaries who lack them by using data collection, decision-making, and importantly, human action.”
“The war in Ukraine has highlighted the urgency with which we must prepare for the next great conflict. As Ukraine’s warriors have unearthed innovation as a key differentiator on the battlefield, then we must waste no time in bolstering our own. China is not Russia. We need to drastically increase our economic and intellectual investment in the functional and ethical use of artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies, and we must reset the American innovation model to meet this need.”
“This includes the allocation of a significantly larger percentage of the defence budget in the United States to the construction of technology that has been tested on the battlefield, and products that are proven to be transformative and actually work.
Ukraine Spending Expansion:
US vows to send more drones, aid to Ukraine on war’s anniversary.
WASHINGTON ― The Pentagon announced Friday morning it would send more drones to Ukraine as part of a new $2 billion package to help in the country’s fight against Russia on the first anniversary of the invasion.
The new $2 billion in aid includes more ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, more ammunition for 155mm artillery and more munitions for unspecified laser-guided rocket systems. It also includes unspecified counter-drone and electronic warfare detection equipment.
In a statement to mark the one-year anniversary of the war, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that under the Biden administration, the U.S. has committed more than $32 billion in ”game-changing” security assistance to Ukraine.
America’s allies, he said, have committed $20 billion in security assistance to Ukraine.
“Difficult times may lie ahead, but let us remain clear-eyed about what is at stake in Ukraine,” Austin said.
“And let us remain united in purpose and in action—and steadfast in our commitment to ensure that a world of rules and rights is not replaced by one of tyranny and turmoil.”
Palantir Value Report:
Report:
Recently, a report by Forrester highlighted the following benefits of using Palantir Foundry, including upwards of a 300% ROI advantage apparent.
The key findings are as followed:
1) Cost savings from better supply chain and inventory management by 30%. Empowered by Foundry’s abilities to integrate and visualize data across the organization, generate insights and what-if analyses, and provide optimal and actionable recommendations, the composite organization uses Foundry to reduce costs related to its high-priority supply chain and inventory management projects. This cost savings is worth more than $161 million for the composite organization over three years.
2) Cost savings from improved procurement process by 30%. As a solution that is applied to diverse use cases, the composite organization also uses Foundry to cut costs related to their high-priority procurement cycles, enabled by Foundry’s holistic examination of all the relevant data and ability to provide optimization options, among other features. This cost savings is worth almost $127 million for the composite organization over three years.
3) Increased employee efficiency by 75% for key technical users and 50% for key business users. This increased efficiency is driven by several Foundry features, including improved data accessibility and harmonization, low code/no-code ease of use, and the generation of options on the best way forward for business and technical decisions. This time savings translates into about $20.9 million for the composite organization over three year.
4) Decommissioned legacy systems by 100% within three years. As a comprehensive data and analytics platform, Foundry allows the composite organization to decommission its legacy data and analytics systems, including a mix of licensed and homegrown solutions. Fifty percent of the legacy environment is decommissioned in Year 1, and 100% by Year 3. This saves the composite organization more than $24.6 million over three years.
In terms of the ROI, and cost of Palantir:
“The representative interviews and financial analysis found that a composite organization experiences benefits of more than $345 million over three years versus costs of over $83.2 million, adding up to a net present value (NPV) of more than $262 million and an ROI of 315%.“
“Foundry has been extremely important in solving our main business problems. We’ve saved hundreds of millions of dollars in a single year.”
Head of supply chain, manufacturing
Why Is Palantir So Powerful?
Ontological Models:
The question is, why is Palantir Technologies so powerful? How can software allow for such evident and dramatic productivity improvements? Fundamentally, enterprise software is now an integral part of the modern enterprise.
It is no longer sufficient for solely average enterprise software solutions. Instead, truly transformative software is required.
To be more specific, the future of software is NOT a static, 2D model, in which solely produces an output. Instead, the future of software is dynamic, ontological. In other words, the future of software is living, breathing, and alive – objects and pieces of code. The future of software is your company, represented as compute – thus as a digital twin. This allows organisations to predict, prevent, simulate outcomes and events, in order to direct the best outcome.
Software within the West is broken. The future of software is not a static 2D analytical dashboard, in which provides some utility, yet fails to transform the company. Instead, the future of software is a 3D ontological model, that allows for simulations, predictions, and thus optimal outcome decisions. A simplistic quote to successful highlight the role Palantir plays in actually in relation to biology: “it is not the strongest species that survives, nor the most intelligent; it is the most adaptive to change (Darwin)”. Through the Ontological model, and the Operating System of Palantir, organisations have the ability to predict, prevent, and simulate outcomes and events, thus leading to a tremendous advantage. Fundamentally, traditional software is static, and requires standardisation in order to function. However, this produces no-to-little alpha. Traditional software makes institutions more alike, whereas transformative software makes organisations more differentiated. This is key in order to succeed.
Proprietary Data:
What I want to focus upon is Data versus Code:
When one looks at a range of high performing algorithms across domains, such as:
- Speech recognition
- Image recognition
- Summary of text
Under the hood, these all use the same codebase.
Thus, a major shift has happened.
Code has become the same, more or less as a commodity. Whereas, the thing that enables the differentiation is the data, and the datasets that enable these algorithms.
For companies, the strategic asset is something that enables differentiation against competitors. As more and more software shifts towards AI software, the vector differentiation shifts to data, from code, and the access of data in which one has availability to.
The strategic differentiator is existing data, in conjunction with the engine that one is using to produce new and insightful data, that therefore powers core algorithms.
In the future, there will be algorithms built around a range of novel activities, including:
- Customer recommendations
- Economic transactions
The fundamental physics associated with what the “best” business will look like, shall change.
Palantir as we know – does NOT OWN the data – however SITS ON 20 years of Governmental data, and THEREFORE the platform increases within utility and learns the methods of connection between data points.
Therefore, this is an example of network effects.
As more people use the platform, increased utility of platform is apparent.
Palantir SITS on proprietary data. That is the key.
